And now I mention those great names-my uncle!—he is no more that soul of fire as when I once knew him. Newton and Swift grew dim with age as well as he.1 But, what shall I say?-his mind was too active an inhabitant not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode; for the richest jewels soonest wear their settings. Yet who but the fool would lament his condition! He now forgets the calamities of life. Perhaps indulgent heaven has given him a foretaste of that tranquillity here, which he so well deserves hereafter.

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But I must come to business; for business, as one of my maxims tells me, must be minded or lost. I am going to publish in London a book entitled The Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe.' The booksellers in Ireland republish every performance there without making the author any consideration. I would in this respect disappoint their avarice, and have all the profits of my labour to myself. I must therefore request Mr. Lawder to circulate amongst his friends and acquaintances a hundred of my proposals, which I have given the bookseller Mr. Bradley, in Dame Street, directions to send to him. If, in pursuance of such circulation, he should receive any subscriptions, I entreat, when collected, they may be sent to Mr. Bradley, as aforesaid, who will give a receipt, and be accountable for the work, or a return of the subscription. If this request (which, if it be complied with, will in some measure be an encouragement to a man of learning) should be disagreeable or troublesome, I would not press it; for I would be the last man on earth to have my labours go a-begging; but if I know Mr. Lawder (and sure I ought to know him), he will accept the employment with pleasure. All I can say if he writes a book, I will get him two hundred subscribers, and those of the best wits in Europe.

Whether this request is complied with or not, I shall not be uneasy; but there is one petition I must make to him and to you, which I solicit with the warmest ardour,

At this time Mr. Contarine had become imbecile from age. He died a few months later, aged about seventy-four.—ED.

2 When published the work was titled An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.'-ED.

and in which I cannot bear a refusal.

I mean, dear

Madam, that I may be allowed to subscribe myself, Your ever affectionate, and obliged kinsman, OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Now see how I blot and blunder, when I am asking a favour.

Temple Exchange Coffee House, Temple Bar

August 15, 1758.1

LETTER X.

TO DANIEL HODSON, ESQ., AT LISHOY, NEAR BALLYMAHON,

DEAR SIR,

IRELAND.2

[No date, but written about November, 1758.]

You cannot expect regularity in one who is regular in nothing. Nay, were I forced to love you by rule, I dare venture to say I could never do it sincerely. Take me, then, with all my faults. Let me write when I please; for you see I say what I please, and am only thinking aloud when writing to you. I suppose you have heard of my intention of going to the East Indies. The place of my destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel; and I go in quality of physician and surgeon, for which the Company has signed my warrant, which has already cost me ten pounds. I must also pay 501. for my

1 This letter was first published by Prior, 1837, from the MS. correspondence of Malone with Bishop Percy, in Mr. Mason's collection. Though it appears to have been copied for Percy in 1809, that editor did not use it in his second edition of the Memoir and Works, 1812. Perhaps the proximate death of the bishop, Sept. 30, 1811, at the age of eighty-three, will account for this. Prior says the letter was copied by Malone "at the house of his friend, Mr. Metcalf, at Brighton, in 1809, from one in the possession of Mr. Carleton, nephew to the nobleman of that name, given to him by Mr. Mills, who received it from the family of the lady to whom it was written."-ED.

2 First published in the Memoir by Percy, whence Prior and the other editors have it. Percy dates it "the summer of 1758," but Prior's estimate of "about November" is probably nearer being correct.-ED.

passage, and ten pounds for my sea stores; and the other incidental expenses of my equipment will amount to 607. or 701. more. The salary is but trifling, viz. 100l. per annum ; but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, generally amounts to not less than one thousand pounds per ann., for which the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, with the advantages resulting from trade, with the high interest which money bears, viz. 201. per cent, are the inducements which persuade me to undergo the fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the climate-which induce me to leave a place where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life. I am certainly wrong not to be contented with what I already possess, trifling as it is; for should I ask myself one serious question,-What is it I want?—what can I answer? My desires are capricious as the big-bellied woman's, who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, it is true; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived on more precarious terms? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the Marquis of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller that employed him and why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions? Yet, upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know you have in Ireland a very indifferent idea of a man who writes for bread; though Swift and Steele did so in the earliest part of their lives. You imagine, I suppose, that every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby clothes, and converses with the meanest company. Yet I do not believe there is one single writer, who has abilities to translate a French novel,1 that does not keep better company, wear finer clothes, and live more genteelly, than many who pride themselves for nothing else in Ireland. I confess it again, my dear Dan,

:

1 Prior thought that this allusion perhaps pointed the date of Goldsmith's translation of the Memoirs of my Lady B.,' one of his lost works. See the receipt for the payment made for this work with the Memoranda at the end of the present volume.-Ed.

that nothing but the wildest ambition could prevail on me to leave the enjoyment of that refined conversation which I am sometimes admitted to partake in, for uncertain fortune and paltry show. You cannot conceive how I am sometimes divided: to leave all that is dear to me gives me pain; but when I consider I may possibly acquire a genteel independence for life-when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise itself above contempt and ridicule when I think thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar, as much in my circumstances, as I am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish a book, for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I wrote to my brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among your acquaintance a hundred proposals, which I have given orders may be sent to you; and if, in pursuance of such circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, when collected, be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give a receipt for the same.

[Omitting here what relates to private family affairs, he then adds:

I know not how my desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long slept, has again revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly when low-spirited, to return home and leave my fortune, though just beginning to look kinder. But it shall not be. In five or six years I hope to indulge these transports. I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, which alone makes men great. I will, however, correct my faults, since I am conscious of them.2

This omission note is just as it occurs in the Percy Memoir.-ED. 2 The letter has no signature in Percy; and this perhaps indicates another omission, either from loss or the mention of more "family matters."-ED.

SIR,

LETTER XI.

TO MR. RALPH GRIFFITHS.1

[Jan. 1759.]

I know of no misery but a gaol to which my own imprudences and your letter seem to point. I have seen it inevitable these three or four weeks, and, by heavens! request it as a favour-as a favour that may prevent somewhat more fatal. I have been some years struggling with a wretched being, with all that contempt that indigence brings with it, with all those strong passions which make contempt insupportable. What, then, has a gaol that is formidable ? I shall at least have the society of wretches, and such is, to me, true society. I tell you again and again, I am now neither able nor willing to pay you a farthing, but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the tailor shall make; thus far, at least, I do not act the sharper, since, unable to pay my debts one way, I would willingly give some security another. No, Sir, had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances. I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which poverty unavoidably brings with it: my reflections are filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a villain; that may be a character you unjustly charge me with. Your books, I can assure you, are neither pawn'd nor sold, but in the custody of a friend from whom my necessities oblig'd me to borrow some money whatever becomes of my person, you shall have them in a month. It is very possible both the re

2

1 Mr. Ralph Griffiths was the proprietor of the Monthly Review, the magazine for which Goldsmith was writing at this time. The letter is undated, but it is endorsed in Griffiths' hand, "Rec. in Jan. 1759." Prior published it from the original, then in the Heber collection.-ED. 2 Cunningham conjectures that the "books were the four reviewed by Goldsmith in the Monthly Review for December, 1758. These were, it will be seen from our collection of the Criticisms in vol. iv.-Wise's Enquiries,' Bayly's Introduction to Languages,' Burton's 'Greek Tragedies,' and Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.-ED.

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